With the increasing popularity of the site, I've decided to implement some temporary changes that may or may not be permanent. You see, this started off as a humble little blog, a spinoff from a Blogger blog that got something like 10 hits a day, if I was lucky.

Now I feel the time has come where I must make some decisions about managing the front page, and the site overall. This process has already started. I disabled trackbacks because of malicious spamming of the site. We're talking scores of hits per minute. The spam module was catching it ably, but the burden on the server was slowing down the site. Even now, the spammers repeatedly hit the site for trackbacks, despite the "404-Not Found" results. I figure they'll eventually realize they're just wasting their own bandwidth by pinging nonexistent pages. Or I'll just block those IP addresses at the root level, keeping them off the site altogether.

I also turned off anonymous commenting, also because of spammers. I may enable a captcha-filtered alternative so more people can again comment without having to sign in, but that's not going to happen right now. I have to many other things on my plate at the moment.

I've disabled the ability of newly-registered users to create new posts. All members will be able to comment, but privileges to post new blog posts will be retained for "cleared" users only.

Who is a cleared user? Someone I know, or has a website I know and like, or participates on another site in a way I can appreciate. If I don't know you or your site, you can ask me to take a look at it, for consideration as a cleared user on MediaGirl. Another way to receive cleared user status is to participate here in the comments, and build a track record. Post some good stuff, and you might suddenly find "create new post" in your user navigation menu.

I don't mean to sound patronizing or high-handed. I'm not looking to close the doors. But even though I am posting anonymously here as "media girl," this site is mine -- a reflection of me. I don't hold copyright on anyone else's writing here. Nor do I necessarily endorse or agree with it. But I do reserve the right to screen the participants.

I am very appreciative that so many have been participating here so far, and I hope this doesn't change that spirit. In fact, I hope that members find the place to be a little bit safer and welcoming, knowing that this is a home of sorts, and not a train station.

Anyway, this announcement has gotten way too long.

For many reading this -- those who already are trusted users -- these changes will go unnoticed. For the rest, I hope you'll participate in the comments. And if your account does not have cleared user status, but you feel you have a voice that complements the diversity of MediaGirl, talk to me.

BlogHer was a retreat of sorts -- get away from the guys (and most blogger conferences are nearly all-male) and sound off about what we care about. Some of the discussion was about dealing with people indifferent or unfriendly to your views, and how many of us simply don't want to deal with that.

And yet without mixing it up with the guys, there's little way for us to get our views across. Even our search engine rankings suffer because men tend not to link to women, they link mostly to each other.

Roxanne says suck it up, trolls are a fact of life. Deal with it. In fact, "anger can be used to our benefit." I say absolutely ... as long as you don't let it swallow you whole.

With the Roberts nomination front and center, choice is being talked about more and more, especially on some of the most well-known political blogs. But whatâ€™s disturbing is that choice and abortion are being discussedâ€”in blogs and in the mediaâ€”more as a political tool than as an issue that affects womenâ€™s lives.

So NARAL is issuing a call to action. Weâ€™ve listed five of the some of the most well-known progressive blogs belowâ€”go to them and make your voice heard. Use their comments sections to make sure that choice is being discussed as something that affects women, not just politics.

Daily Kos
Perhaps the most well-known progressive blog, Daily Kos gets ridiculous hits and covers a broad spectrum of issues. Like many political blogs however, it could use a nice dose of womenâ€™s voices--especially on choice.

Eschaton
Right up there with Kos, this blog is super well-known and insanely comprehensive. There are literally hundreds of comments for some posts, so pro-choice voices can get lost in there--make sure it doesnâ€™t happen!

My DD
Another big one, My DD is run by co-bloggers Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers. While their Roberts coverage has been great, it would be great to see more on the choice aspect.

Some have noted that over the weeks since the pie fight I've been citing content from DailyKos, despite everything. Today, in Booman, eodell makes an eloquent case "Why DailyKos isn't worth fighting for":

During the now-infamous Pie Fight and the ensuing exodus of liberal Democrats, there were a number of well-intentioned (and some not so well-intentioned) folks who urged the offended parties to stay and fight. There were several reasons offered, the chief of which was, essentially, that dKos had become a powerful force on the left, and therefore was worth fighting for. I'd like to debunk that notion, and present the reasons I decided to move on.

The fact of the matter is that dKos, like every other blog on earth, and the majority of voluntary associations, has no value or power outside of its members. There may be the odd exception, like the Better Business Bureau, which is potent in part because of its long-established good reputation, but dKos and blogs generally have barely been on the radar of the more attentive sections of the general public for scarcely a year. Moreover, based on Markos Moulitsas' occasional revealing comments about his hardware and -- thanks to the selfsame Pie Fight -- his ad traffic, it's plain that it isn't even that big of a site. Big, perhaps, for the nascent field of political blogs, but there was a time when the biggest, baddest (and only) search engine on the block was Lycos. It didn't matter in the long run.

It's a strong assertion, and not something with which I don't necessarily disagree. There's more:

Now, here are the reasons I think fighting this is futile:

Moulitsas and his close allies have backed themselves into a corner. It would take a degree of humility one may be fairly certain they do not possess for them to change course, much less apologize.

I would tend to agree with this. It seems especially true of a chest-thumper like Gilliard, whose own misogynistic -- or at least chauvinistically and dismissively sexist -- rants have not missed notice by other women. These brash boys have attached their fragile -- or should I say "brittle"? -- male egos to their macho poses. Girls, get outta my way! they say as they place their feet in their mouths.

DailyKos has very clearly -- if less than honestly and openly -- staked out its turf. It's all about winning elections by chasing the center. The Kos-DLC sniping that has gone on over the past year isn't about ideology; it's a simple turf war. Kos plainly objects to the level of corporate influence in the DLC, but it's hard to see any other difference between the two.

This could very well be true. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. To me, it's about values -- yes, moral values -- and right now the GOP represents so much immorality I look to the Democrats for sanctuary, if not salvation. What's become clear, though, is that this is a fool's quest, for the elected politicians in the Democratic Party seem to be largely in thrall with many of the same corrupting influences that have given the GOP its current stench. A few stand out, such as Senator Boxer and Representative Slaughter, but in general the Democrat politicos have shown a lust for the backing of those who back the Republicans. (I'd say there are exceptions in the GOP, too, but they are far too prone to sitting on whatever self-proclaimed principles they hold to toe the party line, no matter how offensive or immoral. One thing is clear about the Republicans: much more often than the Democrats, they put the interests of their party over the interests of the nation.)

What was patently obvious to many of us by the time Kos threw the pie fight ad into our faces is that he's of the same ilk. He's a self-labeled Deaniac, but he certainly seems to have real problems with values talk. His several-days-late-and-a-few-dollars-short attempt at framing values still seemed to miss the obvious. As was made so painfully clear in his anti-NARAL stance, his focus is on electing any Democrat (no matter how odious) over any Republican (no matter how principled). It's the Party, stupid! is the dKos campaign mantra. Given my remarks in the previous paragraph, one might consider my own position to be inconsistent. I will only answer that, while I remain skeptical of any Republican's ability to stand up for principle in stead of toeing the GOP anger point of the week, I feel party affiliation is no way to frame a values-based discussion in general. DailyKos is about party talk, not values talk, and that leaves little room for me.

DailyKos is, as Moulitsas is fond of saying, about partisan politics. Activists, on the other hand, are driven by ideology and issues. It's probably safe to say that if the American political system made third parties viable, there would be massive defection from the Democratic Party. This makes sense: if you want politicians to listen to you, being a party-line voter is counterproductive. Politicians listen to the people whose votes they're not sure of. Partisan activists need to be fed and watered, of course, but it's the ideological factions that have to be appeased.

When it comes to politicians and organizations having to appease Markos, though, there comes the question: Who are today's Establishment players who feel they must be appeased, really?

There is a real danger in any blog becoming the self-appointed voice of the party. Recent refugees from dKos know why this is, but politicians need to take care as well. By closely associating with dKos or any blog, as some congresscritters have, they run the risk of being tied to the inflammatory comments posted by J. Random Troll and the site's owner. Elizabeth Dole has already made much of the association of Democratic politicians with Markos Moulitsas and his intemperate remarks referring to the contractors who were massacred, mutilated, and hanged in Iraq as "mercenaries". By learning to communicate, possibly via a mechanism as simple as RSS, with as many liberal blogs as possible, our elected officials will increase their reach while reducing their vulnerability to loose cannons.

I agree with this, which is why I prefer to flit around from site to site, rather than inhabit just one superblog, especially one with so much shouting -- and shouting down.

Finally, and most importantly for me personally, the thing I value most about America is the egalitarian ideal for which it has striven since its inception. Everything else is secondary to that ideal, because, IMHO, everything else flows from it. For Moulitsas and his crew, that is evidently a fungible issue. For me, it is not. Without devotion to equality before the law, no country and no party -- and certainly no website -- is itself worthy of devotion.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? There are many whose words fly up to flirt with high ideals, but their thoughts remain below, in the tit-for-tat logic of trench warfare. Quaint matters like equal protection under the law for all or the particular right to freedom from state-controlled breeder-slavery for women don't measure up to the "important shit" in the eyes of Kos (who insists that a woman's control over her own body must be considered a matter of 'privacy,' like library records or what you have in the trunk of your car).

Yet I don't visit DailyKos for Markos' insights and assertions. In fact I tend to ignore his posts. I visit to see what the other diarists are writing about, because many of them are in tune with some very interesting things going on (such as the e-voting hearing yesterday). Yet even then, I tend not to read most of the discussion. Yes, the big bad brash boys have turned me off on the tone of dialogue there.